


Autopsy

by Birdbf



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Autopsy, Coping, Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5287283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbf/pseuds/Birdbf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could not imagine this body ever being anything but dead.<br/>A corpse sitting upon the autopsy table,<br/>preparing to be cut apart<br/>and observed<br/>and labeled accordingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autopsy

**Author's Note:**

> The young Isa Souma performs his first autopsy without Dr. Kawara's help.

The latex around Isa’s hands, claustrophobic-tight, clung taut against his bony knuckles. Against his dark skin the air bubbles squeezed past as he wrung his hands almost nervously, working in narrow circles around each other as if they were to mimic an uroboros. 

There was some sort of unease, evident even in his shallow breaths as Isa braced himself mentally for what came next. His breath hung lurid in the chilly air around him, soft puffs of transparency escaping his lips as he struggled to remember to breathe. He didn’t understand why he was so uncomfortable. He had dissected, inspected, mutilated, maimed bodies before–over and over. His lungs felt too big for his ribcage, too tight around his pounding heart fluttering under his thin pigeon's chest.

It was his job. It’s what he did for a living. It had never bothered him in any other circumstance, not since the first day when he tasted bitter bile on the back of his tongue as his scalpel dragged across the rigor mortis skin of his first body, deathly pale yet laced with crimson-grey bruises from the violent crime that had caused this hideous body to be dragged in, delivered in garbage-bag textured gift wrapping. 

The doctor had encouraged him, a reassuring touch to his shoulder. While initially, Isa had recoiled against the seemingly unpleasant touch, the pressure grounded him. His brain had floated into some far-off space where he had lost the reminder of what he was doing. His hands had been warm and large, engulfing the young Partridge's shoulder in a vice.

This time, there was no pressure. No hand on his shoulder, no smell of Dr. Kawara’s cologne, no soft hum and a reminder that it’s just a body. He hadn’t needed such a reassurance since he was 14. Standing here as an adult--a grown man, in his own eyes, he felt like he should be ashamed to be so reluctant. Shame, however, was not what he felt. Isa took a deep breath to calm himself, as he had forgotten to breathe for long enough that his throat itched, now, and his lungs ached..

The first challenge was the freezer.

Passcode entry. It was easy enough, despite Isa’s trembling fingers, hitting the wrong buttons to startle him with that spine-jolting buzzer noise. Incorrect. Incorrect. Incorrect. After several tries, the light illuminated red before turning a light grey, signalling that the freezer was unlocked. An exhale followed of the pressure releasing, the airlock around the bodybag much chillier than the cold room, making the young bird shudder as he pulled out the drawer. Pulling the stretcher in front, he dragged the body with a bit of effort onto it. 

The bag was heavy. Approximately 175.8 lbs, nearly 80kg. Isa was far from strong, but he was not so frail that he could not get it onto the stretcher without assistance. The body was nearly 6 feet tall, and if he was not careful, the far end would hang off of the edge of the stretcher before he could get it to the dissection table.

It took quite a bit of effort and quite a bit of maneuvering to drag the body onto the table. Cold chrome and silver, twenty degrees colder than the frosty room around him. Isa shuddered as his gloved hand touched the table.

It was not a throne, and this body was not a king, so there was no purpose in being so delicate. He could not muster up any bodily force, even with this in mind. 

As he unzipped the bag, he could only observe the body. No external trauma. The bag was pulled from beneath the corpse, as he had been unable to observe it before. There has been no opportunity since the scientific donation had been rushed in. 

“A great contribution,” They called it. “A passionate endeavor to donate their body to something they loved,” They called it. 

“A true pity for their family, though,” He could hear being mumbled to the sidelines. This was none of his concern, however. A body is a body, no matter whom loves it. No condolences could be offered to compensate for the loss. A parent, a child, a grandparent, a cousin or a spouse. It was a corpse to be buried, dissected, burned, cooked, left in a field to monitor the decomposition rate of someone with their BMI…And this one, in particular, was going to be dissected and preserved.

The expression on their face was peaceful. Pale eyelashes and their skin sunken around in their skull. Isa could not help but run his gloved fingers over the hollows of their cheek bones. 

Laughter lines and crow’s feet, Isa carefully grazed over each line with his thumb. This corpse smiled a lot, if seemed, from these tell-tale wrinkles. They were middle aged–somewhere in their early thirties, maybe. He never bothered to read their identification tag, labeled and named and dated. 

This body was not any of this person. Their birth date, case number, place and date of death did not matter to him. This was a corpse, a skin sack for more vital organs. A container for a beautiful red fluid, viscous and wet around his gloves yet never meeting his skin.

Despite this, Isa could not seem to do anything but inspect and touch the body. His gloved hands would explore their face, one drifting down to settle over the feathers gathered on their chest, in replacement for chest hair. His fingers slid over their ribs, between the sunken skin where he could at one point feel their breath swelling within them if he tried hard enough. That time was long gone. 

He could not imagine this body ever being dressed. He could not imagine this body ever being anything but dead. A corpse sitting upon the autopsy table, preparing to be cut apart and observed and labeled accordingly before being dispensed into jar after jar of formaldehyde and preservatives, set upon a three-tier shelf to be wheeled into the sample rooms. His observations would be vital, determining what exactly happened to his body. What, exactly, killed them.

Perhaps their throat closed off. Or they began to internally hemorrhage. Or they had an allergic reaction. Or they inhaled poison, or their heart stopped, or their digestive tract rejected all that had been within it.. How unsanitary. 

He would cut the skin, in due time. That proper skin-flap doorway, the Y-shaped incision between their ribcage and up along their collarbones. He would remove the kidneys, lungs, heart, brain.. But on his own terms.

 

But there Isa stood, observing this long-dead body as procrastination. 

This was not anything that should hinder him.

The cold, tanned skin. The soft grey feathers trailing from the base of the corpse’s pubic bone up to their chest, like they had never preened before in their life. These feathers re-connected at their jaw, leaving a 5 o’clock shadow along their chin and jawline.. That color that was one of many degrees of grey Isa could see.

Cataract red eyes. The only color on this miserable, miserable corpse, hidden away by grey eyelids, pulled away by Isa as if to check and confirm that this was, in fact, a corpse. Not a trick by someone with a very poor sense of humour. The eyelids felt heavy beneath his fingers as he pried them up before falling back when released, long eyelashes falling across the body's cheeks.

Had Tohri not been so obviously distressed by this turn of events (Perhaps he had been acting?) Isa half-expected the gaudy pheasant with a hideous red coloration in all of the wrong places to barge through the door and mock him for the helpless expression he just knew was on his face. For his confusion. For the feeling he could not understand, and for the sickness rising up in his guts once more. A heat flooded the back of his throat as he turned away, swallowing down the ill feeling to substitute with determination.

This body was not Dr. Kawara.

Dr. Kawara was loud, obnoxious. He reeked of the coat he had not washed in far too long and the colognes and perfumes both Tohri and Mrs. Kawara attempted so desperately to cover the smell with. 

Dr. Kawara was full of caffeinated energy. His breath always smelt heavily of coffee or cheap energy drinks to reflect this. Full of this undying urge to always be touching someone, even if they disliked it initially. “A lack of regard for personal space,” Isa and Tohri agreed, though they never really agreed on anything else.

Full of excitement at the smallest things. Rocks, despite being a pathologist. Isa’s chin growing those little pale feathers. Teaching him how to preen such feathers away, though the Chukar would cringe as the roughness of his hands, wince at the tweezers stinging for a split-second as he plucked the down from his face.

Kindness. Frequent invitations on the nights when he did go home, to meet Mrs. Kawara, to have dinner and explore his cheap apartment, to meet his young son. Isa was unsure on how to react to children. This child, not fearing his cold expression and empty stare, was desperate to tug at the ribbon on his shirt, to eat his buttons, to rip at his hair. Dr. Kawara would smile at them both in a way that made Isa feel very, very young. 

“That means he likes you!” He seemed to be teasing. Isa did not understand this, either.  
“Children are strange.” As were most things he did not fully grasp.

“Ryouta, give Isa a kiss.”

And this child, slobbery toothless mouth and frail body and all, would pull at his hair hard enough to make him yelp and plant a staged kiss on the edge of his mouth to earn praise from Dr. Kawara. The doctor would sweep the infant from Isa’s shaking arms, almost effortlessly while the child felt like ten tons in Isa’s grip.

Isa would wonder if he would earn such praises if he did the same, perhaps a kiss atop the chick’s forehead being due. Even with this observation on social etiquette he was oblivious to, he would never experiment with this theory. 

And this was not the same Dr. Kawara, plagued by exhaustion, for it seemed some nights that he was quite literally working himself to death. He would fall asleep at his desk at times. Clocking in those overtime hours would do well for his flimsy paycheck, but sometimes Isa believed he just simply needed to go home. He would never tell, though, and simply scold him the morning after despite wrapping a tarp around his shoulders to help the pigeon from chilling in the workroom. Hypocrisy at its finest.

He had not even picked up the scalpel yet, but he felt sick. 

Unable to look at the serene face before him, Isa lifted the blade, finally moving it to push into the skin of the corpse’s sternum.

_This body was not Dr. Kawara._


End file.
